Jean-François Millet
The Gleaners - 1857 - Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Santa Classics - 2015
Millet once said, ’’The human side of art is what touches me most." In The Gleaners, he depicts poor women collecting grain from the fields after the harvest. Millet first hung The Gleaners at the Salon in 1857. It immediately drew negative criticism from the upper classes. Having recently gone through the revolution of 1848, it was viewed with trepidation. Critics said this Image glorified the working class. To them it was a reminder that French society was built on the shoulders of the working masses. They associated the representation with the growing movement of socialism. Also, this large size was usually reserved for religious or mythological subjects. But here was used to represent the plight of the poor. Because of this criticism, after the exhibition the painting was sold for 3,000 francs well below Millet’s asking price of 4,000 francs. Twenty years later, when Millet’s popularity was on the rise, it was sold for 300,000 francs.
Gleaning was the collecting of edible leftover’s, after the crop had been harvested. In France, this had been permitted by law since 1554 and remains on the books today. The reasoning for this stems from the Old Testament. “When you’re harvesting your field, if you forget a sheaf, don’t go back into the field to get it. Let the foreigners, orphans and widows take it. If you do this, the Eternal your God will bless everything you do.” Maybe this was not generosity, but the farmer’s hope for continued good harvests. To see original: https://bit.ly/3uYf19u